Meta

Category: Family

Happy holidays n shit, folks! Allow me to ring in the season with this jpeg of my festive card (photo by Sass), which, now that I’ve stabbed every fed ex/kinkos employee into a bloody pulp to have prints made on time, figured out exactly how to buy stamps and then spent an entire night addressing and personalizing 100 of them…have now probably arrived at your door (if you did not receive a card I suggest you become BETTER FRIENDS WITH ME. This was the first card in what is sure to be a tradition for years to come. I’d love for you to be included). These pictures were so hard to take. I wish I had some behind the scenes footage of Sass trying to make the Chokey (my apartment) presentable and then trying to keep Kos n Gon’s attention for long enough to snap this pose. It was near impossible. Maybe I’ll post the outtakes sometime!

OBViously the reason I haven’t posted anything in so long is because of the job I had (or so that’s my excuse) the last few weeks of which I spent delirious, looking like this

and of course, answering emails like this

Welp.

During my free time I was spending all my money on BRUNCHES and not giving a single fuck cause, I mean, ya gotta eat. One must eat. Also, I was involuntarily waking up at 9:30 am and starting to feel weak around midnight. Sometimes my friends would convince me to come out to things and I’d show my lazy face. My fav night was one where Moe, Lamonday, Emma and I went to SHADE: DETROPIA and it was shut down for some unknown reason (they have since had their ‘redux’ but I didn’t feel like going. I’m not kiddin bout this lazy thing, and also it was raining so like, nah). Afterwards we sauntered over to Wreck Room where I fended off randos who kept striking up convos about the teeny tiny Eli Manning jersey I was wearing. I don’t know anything about sports! I bought this cause it made my boobs look big and the guy I have a crush on is a huge giants fan! What are you talking about, sahn! Moe met some dude he kept calling DJ Khaled who was most definitely not, and we ended up jumping in the back of his jeep(?) and going to Bossa Nova, where his aggro muscleman entourage wouldn’t let me talk to any boys or walk home alone. I was like, mane, I just needed a ride. I’m a free woman! The fuck is this shit! It was so much fun.

two idiots & their cartoon counterparts

Oh, and once I went to a house show to see my friends Junior Astronomers play. Reid kept yelling stuff like “TWITTER POLL: WHO HAS A BLUNT?” and “FAM! FAM! TWITTER POLL: DO I GIVE A FACK?” and then he pulled his wiener out. It was one of the more eventful nights of the last month.twitter poll: is u crazy?

I guess I have to admit something that is a bit suspect, which is I’ve probably only visually absorbed about 30% of my life over the last 2 months because I’ve been texting someone I refer to as “Teen Boo” (he’s 21). I’ve sent about a nude a day, which is out of control, and have gotten pretty much nothing else done. Meanwhile, he lives far away and I only get to see him like once a month or less (it’s the perfect relationship!). The first of those times was just before I left for Thanksgiving when he was in town visiting family. The night before he came over, I tried to tweet this

I def did not. When we finally met IRL I did not fuck it up. We actually had a fabulous time that looked a little something like this:The next day I packed up and left for a Martha’s Vineyard Skanksgiving Extravaganza, which was to take place at my brother Nate’s, and included the couple affectionately termed Winnah, a lot of vodka cran and TONS of food. As Nate prepared the turkey in his surgical gloves and we quoted got2b real and talked shit about everyone we know, I got drunker and drunker and drunker. By the end of the meal, we were apparently listening to old Daft Punk and I was apparently doing this…

and then I took this selfie on nate’s couch

The next day I didn’t even have a hangover, but I did poop enough to make room for a MASSIVE seafood dinner that was basically a giant bowl filled with lobster and potatoes and mussels and sausage and I ate it ALL because…I don’t fuck around. This booty didn’t just appear out of nowhere, ok? Before I left we did an offroading trip around Chappy, and I instagrammed this pic that my friend Cassie called my “alter-ego who wears clothes!” which basically sums up the family-friendly side of my persona. I was still drunk, though! I mean…let’s be real.

Since I’ve been back, I’ve been BRUNCHING MY LIFE SAVINGS AWAY with friends (Stacey visited last weekend! The look on her face when I told her I asked for Uggs for christmas was just priceless) and feeling sorry for myself because the company I work for just elects not to pay its employees whenever it’s in the mood. I’m not great at budgeting as it is, so when you’re living paycheck to paycheck, not getting one can reeeally hurt. That’s why I always eat for two, in case I have to skip a meal.

NOW I’M IN NC and waiting for all my best homies to arrive. This year’s holiday party theme is well under construction and about to pop the fuck off. This Saturday…at 3801…they are coming.BE THERE.

In the summer of 2010 I once drank so much four loko that I staple-gunned my boot to my ankle. I must have looked so insane and pathetic in the attic of my much older friend’s house, sitting on the carpet with my legs in a W, laughing and crying a little as I pulled the metal out. I was 20 years old. I had no idea yet how to order a drink in a bar, but it wasn’t the first time I’d gotten drunk and hurt myself.

—–

A few days before I returned from North Carolina, while sexting a photo of my naked butt, I got an unexpected phone call about starting a new “gig,” (what the kids are calling jobs these days). It was a welcome opportunity since as you know I spent the major part of the last month fucking around, drinking cocktails and trying to get rid of my tan lines. But when I was torn from my spot on my childhood trampoline and catapulted into normal working hours back in lower manhattan, it was quite an adjustment. Every morning when my alarm goes off I am convinced there must be some way around it. This usually leads to a very rude awakening, followed by a lot of running through my apartment yelling “SHIT,” a lot of makeup and hair products being shoved into a giant canvas bag, and a lot of primping on the train.

It’s the same way I got ready for high school every morning. I’d guzzle 20 ounces of generously sugared black coffee in the passenger seat of my father’s car at 7 am, sometimes after sneaking out, taking drugs from strangers and only coming home to change my shirt. I’d drag the torn edges of my American Eagle jeans into first period hoping no one would notice I was five minutes late, or that I’d only slept twelve hours that week. In high school I was the girl who was greeted with giggles and whispers of “did you hear?” when I entered a room. My grades were impressive, I brushed my teeth twice a day and took a bath every night. But on any given weekend I’d probably drank half a bottle of watermelon burnette’s and gone skinny dipping in the backyard of a house party with someone’s boyfriend, or girlfriend, or both. I’d probably thrown up in a bush. Cheap liquor will do that to the girl who doesn’t eat. But I was gonna be famous. One day I’d be an Olsen twin.

—–

The summer of 2010, the one after we burned our house down, led to a winter, a spring, a subsequent summer and fall. By then I was great at ordering drinks in bars and guzzling bottles of sailor jerry on the back of my boyfriend’s motorcycle. I was even better at getting in drunken fights with that boyfriend almost daily. Some nights there were screaming matches in the streets. Other nights he’d carry me into our house over his shoulder after I had one too many shots. By my 22nd birthday I’d finished college, which might actually be the worst thing for a drinking problem. I was older, but I wasn’t an Olsen. I was depressed, directionless, 15 pounds heavier and never leaving the house. Until one day I did, and I ended up in jail. But that’s another story.

After the mandatory alcohol therapy and the somewhat sobering shame of making the front page of The Slammer, I started to get my act together. My unhealthy relationship had ended during a tumultuous Mercury Retrograde. I had a full time job where my coworker was a convicted felon on work release with an unlikely knack for life-coaching. I was spending one Wednesday a month dressing in my mother’s suits and hiding my undercut for court appearances to end up with a clean record. I was texting a funny writer boy in New York. I wanted to take risks, be stronger, do great things with my life and heart. So I started, and eventually I began to rise like a phoenix, I guess, from metaphorical ashes this time.

—–

Since then, I’ve only had a handful of dark drunken moments, most of which I laugh off and write about here. Once I cussed out a room full of innocent friends after drinking an unknown amount of four loko, which, by the way, is no longer my beverage of choice. Twice, maybe three times I’ve blacked out and cried, barefoot on a New York sidewalk. More times than I care to admit, I’ve looked into the wrong person’s eyes for too long.

Two weeks ago I went to sushi with my older brother in Durham, North Carolina. The site of my post-collegiate depression seemed so much cuter outside the haze. I’m sure it was because I’d moved on. I had prospects. I had a job. I’d worked in close proximity to major celebrities when less than two years prior I was watching them on apple TV, alone and hungover with the curtains drawn. He told me over martinis that he’d been reading my blog, and my first thought was fear. Embarrassment. When my brother was my age, he got married and had his first child. I’ve always admired him for that, the way he transformed almost overnight into this professional, responsible man. A daddy. Now 34 years old, he has a third baby on the way.

“Your life isn’t that crazy every night, though, is it?” he asked me. No, not always. And hopefully in the coming years it will be even less so. All of the stories are true; I take club drugs, I wake up too late, I pay for my groceries in quarters, sometimes I forget to eat and I drink too much and I say the wrong thing. I still ask my parents for money every now and then. But I turn 24 soon. I want some of those things to change, and I’m gonna have to figure out how.

Some days you get to work on time. Some days your hair looks perfect and your shirt’s right-side-out. Some days you exercise and some days you’re in love and there’s money in the bank and your shoes are tied and the kitty litter box is clean.

Some days your ambition rules you, your delusions roam freely, driving your life to those high points you are sure it will achieve someday. And some days you’re heartbroken, eating a can of beans in the tub. “But at least,” you think, “I remembered to bathe.”

Oh. Valentine’s day happened? I guess one of my favorite things about being a depressed, pathetic single person is the freedom to make your own holidays and never buy gifts for anyone but yourself. This should explain why I spent my Valentines listening to Bootylicious in my kitchen while downing a personal bottle of pink champagne and devouring a large hunk of brie…and ice cream (if you were wondering yes I am still lactose intolerant.) To add self-inflicted insult to self-inflicted injury, last year I decreed that February 14th would be forever celebrated as my cats’ birthday, in case I ever decide to be in a relationship and need to be reminded that–SIKE–I am doomed to be a spinster .

At one point I ran out of crackers and literally took hunks of brie and used them to scoop boysenberry preserves out of the jar like they were fucking chips and salsa. I can do whatever I want! I’m single!

In addition to letting my cats lick the crumbs from my disgusting display of gluttony I also got up extra early that morning (noon) and made them a heart shaped tuna cake that the three of us ate in my bed.

At least one good thing about February 14th is it means the month is half over. The snow from the recent blizzard has almost completely melted which I appreciate even if it has allowed the rat corpse on my back patio to finally decompose and populate the house with a swarm of impressively massive flies and I mean seriously, Bushwick, come ON. I was just glad to feel the warmth of the sun for the first time since I returned from Maui.

Oh yeeeeah MAUI. I’d sunken so far into my mattress after my return I’d almost forgotten we were ever there.

Talk about a makeshift holiday. The story on Maui is, one miserable icy evening my similarly afflicted (single, drunk) older brother called me and asked me if I wanted to accompany him to the island for his 30-ish-ith birthday. So I said “doy,” made contingency plans for my dumb job, and 4 days later I was on a plane.

I cannot stress how much I needed this quick island “sampling,” as Nate called it. I had managed to get so over-caffeinated and anxious in the days before I departed that I was acting like Gimme from United States of Tara while doing something as simple as shopping for beach supplies. Sometimes I get so wigged out and isolated in my routine that I forget there is a world outside the individual postal districts of my house and workplace. As much as I love New York and as much as I always wanted to live here, there is really no better feeling than leaving my house at sunrise to catch the train to JFK. Even if I am just going to spend all my money at the airport Chili’s and cram myself into a coach seat for 12 hours while trying to ignore the terrible in-flight movie about a guy who dies in a surfing accident.^Being fancy in row 300.

The original plan was to meet Nate at SFO and fly to Kahului but due to a ferry delay back in Martha’s Vineyard, he ended up having to spend a night in LA. This meant that when I arrived in Maui at 10 pm that Thursday, I took my the $80 cab ride back to our RIDICULOUS Fairmont resort alone where I spent my first night ordering room service and sending naked snapchats. Our room was upgraded to an ocean view, so the next morning I woke up to watch the sunrise over the water.

It’s whale season in Maui so while I was eating eggs benedict and tanning my crotch on the lanai I could see them breach above the surface of the water. Essentially the exact opposite of a typical morning for me, unless you count guzzling cups of coffee in my windowsill and talking to the feral cats in my backyard a similar experience.

Let’s not talk about it.

When my brother finally did arrive it was about 2 in the afternoon and I had been waiting ALL DAY for a cocktail. So we spent the hours before sunset “sipping” island beverages poolside and scamming on all the sexy guys who had brought their disparately unattractive wives to the resort.

“When I die,” Nate said swallowing his third Mai Tai, “I’m coming back as an ugly white woman.”

We swam in the ocean at sunset, disregarding it as prime shark feeding time.

That night we ate our weight in fresh caught fish at the infamous Mama’s Fish House (which we affectionately referred to as Mama’s Fish Hole). We continued getting drunk and rapping ad nauseam on our history of shit relationships before crashing against our will. Maui is five hours behind east coast time, so my late night nudes met their recipients just in time to start the New York work day before I poured myself into bed.

Nate wasn’t kidding about staying busy on this trip. There wasn’t a moment that we weren’t swimming or diving or hiking or power sipping our cocktails, beginning at dawn every morning. The next day we ventured to Black Rock and Hololua bay to snorkel with sea turtles and hear the whales chit chatting under water.“I don’t give a damn about anybody’s coconuts…unless they’re my coconuts. Saddi!”
Idk why I look bummed. Probably all the exercise.

Later we drove out to our drive to West Maui, a gorgeous labyrinth of one lane roads that weave through the mountains. This shit was seriously off the map. No cell service and miles away from actual civilization. The closest things to commerce on this part of the island are the fruit stands and the meth dealers. Our destination was something called 13 Crossings, which is a somewhat treacherous makeshift trail across Makamakaole stream leading to a waterfall. Unfortunately we got started so late that the sun started dropping before we made it to the end, and we barely made it out before dark. This was not a place you wanted to get stuck in the middle of the night. I mean, it’s a damn rainforest. Luckily there are no poisonous snakes in Maui, but they do have wild boars. I almost cracked my moneymaker on a rock like three times. Do they even have plastic surgeons on this island? I wasn’t about to chance it.
^^no pants allowed on the hike.
That night we took a disco nap before getting up at 5 am to drive the 10,000 feet up Haleakala, a massive volcano on East Maui. This took forever, but the 15 year difference between us gave us plenty of catching up to do. Coming out stories, psycho boyfriend stories, the works. It was essentially a therapy session, and one I desperately needed. I was still digesting this piece of wisdom as we approached the summit:

“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time” (that’s ya girl Maya Angelou)

Damn. Was it time to make a change in my life?

When we finally got to the top of that volcano the sight was so breathtaking it was impossible to feel like the center of the universe. That kind of perspective is freeing and necessary, and something I don’t get often.

^Rare photo of me tired and happy. Here’s why:We spent the rest of the day by the pool while crowds of rowdy straight men gathered around the tiki bar to scream about something called a “superbowl.” Taking in one last sunset over the ocean, we spotted two distant whale tales, a mom and a baby, flipping out of the water in succession.

We made time for a quick sushi dinner before catching our flight home. Nate departed in first class of course, and I crammed myself into the corner of three coach flights. I didn’t get home until 10 the next night and immediately slept for 12 hours.

When I awoke for work the next day, Maui felt like little more than a dream. My dreary routine was back in full swing and lo and behold I was alone again.

Not to shatter the illusion or anything, but I actually have a pretty simple life about half the time. I get pretty turned on by domesticity, not because I feel somehow destined for it as a woman (what?) but because, just like sex and partying and being a thug, it’s something I genuinely enjoy. This is heightened around the holidays. When I moved out of my parents’ house five years ago I realized I had taken for granted the elaborate ceremony my mother constructs for every single national celebration–from the Christmas to the Fourth of July to Kid’s Day, a holiday she made up for us when she was a single mom. Once I realized how hard it is just to take care of myself, I developed the utmost respect for anyone of any gender who can juggle a career and a social life and doesn’t sleep in a pile of garbage every night.

While much of this year has been about exploring what New York has to offer in terms of moneymaking and entertainment, a large part of it has also been about self discovery and improvement. In a city where you are inundated with (often unwanted) stimuli as soon as you leave your apartment, it’s important to have a comfortable apartment to come home to. And when you’re surrounded by strangers all day every day, it’s important to be comfortable with yourself when you’re finally alone.

I know…Y SO SRS?!!

What I’m trying to say is, last week I spent most of my free time dustbusting. taking pictures of cats (87 in one week–I counted), looking up Thanksgiving recipes, listening to Norah Literal Jones and writing meditations in my journal to keep the vibes posi and strong.

Here are some of the highlights.

By the time Danksgiving Eve had rolled around my positive energy was so high that I was convinced to go to The Woods for the first time in months and actually had a lot of fun! Later someone told me it was lesbian night and it all made sense. I’m not going to recount the details…just play this video I accidentally made on the cab ride home.

I’m not sure if I was still drunk the next morning or what, but I was in SUCH a good mood I bought a bouquet of flowers to bring to dinner, talked to my mom on the phone for an hour about how much I love her, and spent the rest of the day folding all my love into a serious home-cooked meal at Winston and Hannahs for our guests, Beth, Megan, Linnea and Syma (all while popping 800 mg ibuprofens to stave off my hangover).(Winston made a REAL turkey! It was a big moment for him. From what I hear it was really good…I made a vegan roast that potentially no one enjoyed but me *DIVA SHRUG*)(The most important ingredient in ev er y thing)(Kiss da cook! Also idk what it is about aprons but they always slide between my boobs all wonky like this)(The finished product! See that giant empty bowl on the corner? That’s what I ate out of. And yes, I finished it all.)
Yeah yeah, so I’d made a huuuge deal about how much partying and drinking I was going to do on Danksgiving. But really I had three beers, ate my dinner and passed out in my brother’s bed. Still though, I felt really accomplished. It’s amazing how rewarding it can be to successfully complete one adult thing from time to time.

Excuse me while I go pat myself on the back until Christmas. Or until my next fuck-up. Whichever comes first.

Last time we spoke I was at the airport waiting for a plane to Boston where I then met Kedrin and my mother, took the Peter Pan bus 1.5 hours to Wood’s Hole and then a ferry to our final destination of Martha’s Vineyard. I was pretty sure we were headed for some innocent family fun. I mostly packed silk and oversized sweaters. You see, my brother is a full-fledged adult about 14 years my senior with a legitimate/demanding job in the medical field, and I have always admired him for this and other reasons. My mom has always compared the two of us because we have similar attitudes and similar taste in men. I see him about once a year, so I always try to make a solid impression.

When we first got on the island it was child’s play. A lot of “this is this” and “that is that” touring around town, photo-oping and hiding my tattoos. I figured I should try to pretend to be a “respectable adult” (I use that term a lot even though I don’t really know what it means) at least until we popped our first champagne. It was kind of working? I hadn’t seen my mom in a while and she had yet to mention anything about the fact that I have no money or how am I going to survive in New York if I just keep taking unpaid internships or have I been having unprotected sex. Things were going well so far.

My brother (his name is Nathan although everyone was calling him “Nate” in an official capacity, which I at first thought was weird but then attributed to his likely desire to simplify his Starbucks orders, which is originally why I started introducing myself as “Kat”), along with his friends whose names I have already forgotten, took us to the west side of the island to see the sunset. It was sort of unbelievable, partly because I don’t remember the last time I saw the sun set over the ocean, and partly because I hadn’t been outside without smelling feces and rat guts for the past five months. It may as well have been Aruba. Or Bermuda. Or anywhere else they sing about in that Beach Boys song where white girls frequently watch the sunset and then get mysteriously abducted. I realized that my brother and I are both single, which is probably the first time this has happened since he was in the closet and I was five. We both love to drink and talk shit. And we both do this thing pretty frequently:

Which is cool. We also both believe in decadence and overeating, so that night we all went to a seafood restaurant and ordered four tiers of oysters and shrimp cocktail and endless bowls of chowder. Our “unconventional” method of dining made everyone in the restaurant inexplicably angry and confused, and they looked at us as if we had just dived face-first into their personal lobster bisque. Now, understand that the end of September is unanimously believed to be the best time of year in Martha’s Vineyard. Mostly because the weather is perfect and there are no tourists, and they always say you should only eat shellfish in months that have an “r” in them. The restaurant was comparatively uncrowded, so I was told. But in a town like Martha’s Vineyard where the point is kind of to be a tourist, the social makeup in the autumn months is sort of questionable. Everyone is a local (so everyone knows everyone, and yes, they are talking about you right now), everyone works about four months out of the year, and everyone is an alcoholic. But at the same time they’re all decked out in Vineyard Vines (it is entirely possible that the phrase “all decked out” actually originated in Martha’s Vineyard but I could completely be making that up). Also there are a lot of weird gingerbread-looking houses and references to the movie Jaws. It’s pretty much what I imagine Disney World would be like if after all the patrons went home the workers took off their plush costumes and sat around drinking and shucking clams. You’d think it’d be cool, but it’s mostly just strange. It’s the kind of place where your neighbors will openly wonder why your blinds are shut all the time, and then mention it to someone who then mentions it to someone else who will then come to you legitimately concerned. You could try to “do you” in Martha’s Vineyard, but I bet it’d be pretty tough.

Despite that fact, I have to say that Martha’s Vineyard is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen and I totally get why people love it. I also get why so many political figures have gotten DUIs there, but we’ll get to that.The next day I did some outdoorsy stuff like swim in a lake and jump off of Jaws Bridge, just so I could be one of those people on facebook who posts a picture of themselves jumping off a bridge where my body is all tiny and everyone’s like “oh cool!” but it doesn’t actually look like a big jump and is not super interesting for anyone who wasn’t there.I still felt pretty cool. For those of you who don’t know, this is called Jaws Bridge because it, like many other parts of the island, appears in the movie Jaws multiple times. Despite having taken something like 42 credits worth of film classes in college I had never seen more than a few scenes in that movie until that weekend. It’s pretty funny; when you watch the movie after touring the island, you realize most of it was filmed just a few hundred feet off shore.

On Saturday we brought more shrimp cocktail and white wine on the 2-car “ferry” to a cook-out on Chappy (aka Chappaquiddick, a word whose google search yields a wiki page for something known as the “Chappaquiddick Incident” when Ted Kennedy basically drunk-drove his mistress off a bridge, left her for dead and ruined his political career. Saturday night was about to do something similar to my reputation). The cook out (or ‘barbecue’ as I refuse to call it) was made up mostly of well-to-do white people in their late 30s to mid 40s and their well-to-do children. Nestled nicely in the middle of that age gap I became the only person silently chugging wine and eating all the food. To this day I am so ashamed of how much food was left when the sun went down that night. I could have done better.

Later that evening was a fashion show for this thing called “Martha’s Vineyard Fashion Week” which I have a hard time typing without feeling deeply embarrassed for that entire island. Thankfully we missed the show itself and made it just in time to drink 7 cocktails and stomp up and down the empty runway to Rihanna and 2010 disco house. I was doing high-kicks and splits and pirouettes in the corner, swing dancing with Nate and head banging with Kedrin. Family bonding at its finest, but you see how this could get you in trouble on an island of 15,000 people.Downstairs at the bar, probably one of three places people actually hang out in Martha’s Vineyard, I met this sexy Serbian dude that could barely speak any English, so naturally we hit it off. But that’s when the bullshit started. I walked back to his house where he stayed with a bunch of other Serbians who appeared to be around my age. We were in the middle of casually doing our thing when he told me, in so many words, that he didn’t want to ~go down~ because I had some pubes. Sometimes I like to be really chill about it, dude. What gives? I told him to fuck off and didn’t say anything about him being uncircumcised because I am a lady.

When I got back to the bar my friends and family were gone, and I proceeded to dump my woes on the cute gay bartender. I asked him for a drink which I’m sure I incorrectly assumed was free, when some puny late-thirties guy from Boston started talking to me. I think I said a paragraph or two about my life before he told me I sounded full of myself. Drunk guys regularly get a false sense of intellectual superiority around me and try to Psych 101 me into confessing that deep down I’m really insecure and I’m just looking for a white knight. I told the guy I felt bad that he has such a lack of confidence that he has to project it onto strangers he meets in bars. Then I told him the reason I act like I’m better than him is because I am, threw my jacket over my drink and walked out of the bar. It wasn’t really my night.

Thanks to google maps we now know that when I left the bar I wasn’t more than ten minute walk from my brother’s house. But at the time my phone was dead and I had been drinking since 4 o clock and I wasn’t really sure what I was doing. I think an old man picked me up in his car, took me to his house and I drank his liquor and thought about robbing him before taking off running out his front door and into the woods. I know this sounds fake. It’s not. Martha’s Vineyard is just a super fake place. I spent what must have been the next two hours walking the perimeter of the island looking for familiar surroundings, diving into the bushes every time a truck drove by. I passed the hospital where my brother works on three different occasions. I think I peed in someone’s front yard.

When I got to the bridge for Vineyard Haven, I knew I’d gone too far. I was exhausted. I was fucked. My feet hurt because I was wearing these Keds-style shoes I’d gotten at H&M five years ago and had worn small holes in each sole. I remember laying down on the ground in a patch of dirt on the bank, looking up at the stars and sort of laugh-crying. It didn’t really matter that this was happening. It didn’t really count anyway because I’d be gone by Monday. I was just getting really hungry.

Just then an Aerostar van full of Brazilian teenagers pulled up and offered me a ride. I borrowed one of their cell phones and got directions from my mom (I seriously think it was only about 12:30 at this point). Everyone was yelling at me in Portugese and laughing. I thanked them in the most appropriate fashion I could muster and got out of the van, where I met Nathan’s friends in the kitchen and assisted them in eating something that I know was well outside my dietary restrictions. My mother was wrapped in a blanket on the couch. Kedrin was nowhere to be found. My brother was screaming at everyone from his bed to shut the fuck up, and that we were adults, and that his friends should fucking leave so he could get some sleep. One of them later puked in my mother’s Brooks Brothers flats. It was pretty hilarious.

The next morning Kedrin was still missing and her phone was dead. Should we call the police? “It hasn’t been 24 hours,” Nathan said, “Let’s go to the beach.” This is the kind of guy he is. Efficient, impatient, and mostly right. We went up-island where all the property is owned by the whole of Jewish Hollywood and I got THE best lobster roll I’ve ever had in my life, saw some seriously eroding dunes and drank tons of beer. Nate and I shared stories about our magnetic attraction to dysfunctional men and he told me his secrets on how to become a self-made world-traveling property owner, which I will never reveal to anyone. That afternoon Kedrin took a cab back to the house and slept until her flight back to North Carolina. I never found out what the hell happened to her, but at least she didn’t get Chappaquiddicked.That night I made myself a vodka cranberry and decided to finally watch Jaws for the first time.

While being back home may be a temporary stint for me, living with your parents for any period of time as an adult can make your daily life more obnoxious in an infinite number of ways. The simple tasks you had performed so easily during college (or that time you were a drug dealer in the years after high school) can be extremely difficult to execute within those disturbingly familiar walls. A quick look at some of the things that have become nearly impossible to carry out since I returned to the nest:

1. Speaking like I normally would. I’m not sure why, but in the years that I was away for college, my vocabulary went from “saying shit and fuck a healthy, normal, enormous amount of times per day,” to “I actually have a case of verbal Tourrette’s that cannot be contained whatsoever. SHIT-BALLS I FUCKING STUBBED MY FUCKING TOE.” This, of course, always shocks my mother, who to this day (god love her) is still convinced that eventually all her teaching will pay off and I’ll miraculously have one or more manners.

2. Sleeping in. The other day at around 11:30 AM while smothering a headache underneath the pillows of my ever-so-classy bunk bed, my mother came in, shook me awake and told me to look for jobs. “It’s AFTER ELEVEN,” she urged. Personally, I would have felt perfectly justified and morally sound in sleeping for another two hours or so, but “Mom, I’m hungover because my friend from high school came over last night after you fell asleep and we drank a handle of Bacardi that we found in her trunk,” doesn’t really roll off the tongue so well on a Tuesday morning.

3. The actual process of getting drunk. Actually, before I had the “legal trouble” I recently acquired, it was pretty easy to share a few bottles of wine and champagne with my mother while watching three-hour Barbara Streisand movies. Now that she realizes I’m no longer the innocent little girl she mistakenly believes I once was, I’m afraid she’ll think I’m a free-loading alcoholic for drinking a Corona with dinner. Usually I can wait until they go to sleep. Inevitably, though, the concept of drinking alone at my parents house is just too depressing to bear, and I never make it past the first beer.

4. Buying Marijuana. If I had a car this would be much easier, or if we didn’t live in a suburban monstrosity of a house in the heart of America’s safest, most tree-free town. But that’s just not the case. Of course I wish I didn’t have to meet a dealer in the bathroom of a Bennigan’s while out to dinner with my family, but after all that stress of trying to find someone who will actually deliver you weed, you kinda need it.

5. Smoking Marijuana. Or anything for that matter. We have a screened-in porch on my deck (because what are we, poor?) which makes for a delightful smoking area during the evening hours. But even after jumping through flaming hoops to find the smallest amount of bud, it seems like things just continue to go wrong. Of course tonight is the night that my parents’ insomnia kicks into gear, welding them to re-runs of Two and a Half Men until the witching hour. Also, where the fuck is one single lighter in this house? Is it sketchy for me to be rifling through all the kitchen drawers at 11 pm? I find a grill torch in the cabinet and decide to smoke in the crawl space of my sister’s closet.

6. Finding one single vegetarian thing to eat. Oh look, about 50 bags of frozen Tyson’s chicken nuggets, leftover beef stew, some Chef Boyardee, chicken flavored Ramen noodles, and six packs of hotdogs. GUESS I’LL BE EATING THIS CAN OF GREAT NORTHERN BEANS.

7. Watching TV and getting on Tumblr all day long. “Honey, shouldn’t you be applying for jobs? Can you fold the laundry? You should clean your room it looks HORRIFYING. Look at this shitty job posting I found you that you would never want to apply for in a million years! Did you see it? I know it says ‘Janitor at local TV station’ but that could look good on your resume! Are you depressed?” No, mom. No, to all of this. Now go away so I can reblog pictures of naked people.

8. Avoiding “family outings.” Contrary to what you might think, I don’t actually go to Irish chain restaurants with my sister and parents because I love being surrounded by drunk people in their 50s while silently stuffing my face with spinach-artichoke dip. As thrilling as that is, I’d much rather be eating an entire pizza alone in my room with my cat. But what am I going to say? “No, I’d rather be pathetic,” and proceed spend 20 dollars on my own meal? Please.

9. Entertaining suitors. The other day when I was casually hanging out with someone I would casually like to bone, I thought I would try to sneak him up to my bedroom for for the ol’ quick-and-risky after he drove me home. I barely made it through the door of my garage before hearing my mother’s voice calling my name from the next room. Of course, my perfect gentleman scuffled into the night before having to drunkenly introduce himself at four the morning. I went to bed feeling grossly unsatisfied and didn’t hear from the guy for days.